Jude the obscene

 What is your reading of prominent male characters?

 Introduction 

 A novel by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) originally printed in abridged and bowdlerized form in Harper's New Monthly Magazine. When the novel was published in an unexpurgated version in 1895, it was attacked as grossly indecent and overly pessimistic. The Pall Mall Gazette labelled it Jude the Obscene, and the Bishop of Wakefield was so disgusted that he burned a copy. Although Hardy lived for another 33 years, he did not write any more novels. Jude Fawley dreams of studying at university, but this aspiration proves unattainable. Both he and his cousin, Sue Bridehead, become trapped in unhappy marriages. Their decision to flout convention and live together leads to social ostracism and a tragic dénouement.

prominent male 

Richard Phillotson

Jude’s schoolmaster at Marygreen who moves to Christminster and fails to be accepted at the university there. Phillotson remains as a teacher, and he later hires Sue and falls in love with her. They marry, but Sue finds she cannot live with Phillotson as a husband. Though Phillotson is a conservative man, he finds that letting Sue leave him feels like the most moral decision, and he sticks by it even when he is punished by society for his disgrace and loses his job and respectability. Phillotson is a kindly, ethical man, but Sue’s lack of love for him causes him great torment.

Jude Fawley

The novel’s protagonist, a poor orphan who is raised by his great-aunt after his parents divorced and died. Jude dreams of attending the university at Christminister, but he fails to be accepted because of his working class background. He is a skilled stonemason and a kindly soul who cannot hurt any living thing. Jude’s “fatal flaw” is his weakness regarding alcohol and women, and he allows his marriage to Arabella, even though it is unhappy, to distract himself from his dream. He shares a deep connection with his cousin Sue, but their relationship is doomed by their earlier marriages, society’s disapproval, and bad luck. Jude starts out pious and religious, but by the end of his life he has grown agnostic and bitter.

Idylls of the king

Idylls of the king

Idylls of the King Summary

Thanks for exploring this Super Summary Plot Summary of “Idylls of the King” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, Super Summary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics.

Idylls of the King is a narrative cycle of twelve poems composed by English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson between 1859 and 1885. The poems recount the legend of King Arthur, his famed knights, his tragic love affair with Guinevere, and the rise and fall of his kingdom. Tennyson based his poems primarily on Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory.

“The Coming of Arthur” chronicles how Arthur becomes the King of Cameliard, or Camelot in some versions. King Leodogran and the city are besieged by beasts and hordes of heathens, so he requests Arthur’s help in vanquishing them. He does, after which Arthur requests the hand of Leodogran’s daughter, beautiful Guinevere, in marriage. Arthur becomes king and, at his wedding feast proclaims, “the old order changeth, yielding place to new,” ushering a new time of prosperity for Britain.

In “Gareth and Lynette,” young Gareth wishes to be a knight in King Arthur’s Court. However, his mother Bellicent will only allow this if he works as a kitchen servant for one year. She relents eventually and Arthur knights him. His first task is to rescue Lynette’s sister Lyonors by fighting four knights: Morning Star, Noonday Sun, Evening Star, and Death—representing the ages of man.

There’s trouble in Camelot in “The Marriage of Geraint.” Rumors circulate that Guinevere and Arthur’s knight and friend Lancelot are having an affair. The knight Geraint fears his wife Enid may be inspired by their scandal. His worries affect his duties as a knight and drive Enid to despair. He decides to reclaim his manhood by going on a quest with her at his side.

In “Geraint and Enid,” the couple go into the wilderness where Geraint devises tests to determine Enid’s loyalty. He is critical of everything she does, including protecting him from bandits, but in the end determines that Enid has been faithful to him. He regains his reputation as an honorable and capable knight.

In “Balin and Balan,” brothers Balin and Balan return to Camelot after being banned three years prior. Balin is ill-tempered and puts Guinevere’s crown on his shield to remind him to calm his temper. However, after he hears rumors about the queen’s infidelity, he goes berserk with dismay: his idol is a fallen woman. During this temper, Balan thinks he hears a demon. In the mix-up, Balan mortally wounds Balin but assures him that his queen is an honorable woman.

In “Merlin and Vivien,” Vivien spreads lies about Guinevere after coming to Camelot under false pretenses. She attempts to seduce Arthur, and when he denies her she does the same to Merlin. She is persistent, and Merlin ultimately surrenders. Vivien boasts in her accomplishments and imprisons him in a tree.

In “Lancelot and Elaine,” the annual tournament is approaching but there are so many rumors about Lancelot and Guinevere that Lancelot considers not appearing even though he has won every year. He decides to attend in disguise so he can still win and present the prize to Guinevere. He borrows armor from a noble, during which the noble’s daughter Elaine falls in love with him. When she realizes he won’t love her back, she kills herself.

"The Holy Grail” tells the story of Percivale and the other knights of the Round Table that pursue the grail against Arthur’s warnings. It’s a fruitless endeavor as the knights face danger and spend time away from Camelot for nothing. Camelot begins to fall apart in their absence.

In “Peleas and Ettare,” Peleas is a young knight who is attracted to Ettare, who only mocks him. When fellow knight Gawain volunteers to help Peleas, he instead falls in love with Ettare and takes her for himself. Upset, Peleas leaves the Round Table and becomes the Red Knight.

In “The Last Tournament,” Arthur’s tournament is put on hold when a servant claims he’s been attacked by the Red Knight. Arthur sets off to avenge the servant and leaves Lancelot in charge of the tournament, which spirals out of control. Tristam is the victor and gives the prize to his married lover Queen Isolt, whose husband Mark kills Tristam. Arthur returns after defeating the Red Knight only to find Camelot in chaos.

In “Guinevere,” the queen flees to the convent in Almesbury to forever part from Lancelot. Arthur confronts her, forgives her, and leaves her at the abbey. She is later chosen as the Abbess and dies three years later.

In “The Passing of Arthur,” Arthur is mortally wounded by Mordred in the last battle. Every knight in the Round Table is killed save for Sir Bedivere, who carries Arthur to Avalon where Arthur first received Excalibur. There, Arthur orders him to toss the sword back into the lake to fulfill a prophecy.

Tennyson wrote the poems in Idylls of the King in blank verse. They don’t follow the style or structure of an epic, but rather take on a sad, elegiac tone that some critics connect with Tennyson’s thoughts on Britain’s societal conflicts at the time. In this critical reading, Arthur embodies Victorian England ideals.

Assignment Sem 1 : Death Of The Proud

 Death Of The Proud 

Name- Janvi Nakum

Paper-Literature of the Elizabethan and Restoration Periods

Roll no-11

Enrollment number- 4069206420210020

Email id- janvinakum360@gmail.com

Batch- 2021-2023 (M.A Sem – 1)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

John Donne

Poet Introduction

The English writer and Anglican cleric John Donne is considered now to be the preeminent metaphysical poet of his time. He was born in 1572 to Roman Catholic parents, when practicing that religion was illegal in England. His work is distinguished by its emotional and sonic intensity and its capacity to plumb the paradoxes of faith, human and divine love, and the possibility of salvation. Donne often employs conceits, or extended metaphors, to yoke together “heterogenous ideas,” in the words of Samuel Johnson, thus generating the powerful ambiguity for which his work is famous. After a resurgence in his popularity in the early 20th century, Donne’s standing as a great English poet, and one of the greatest writers of English prose, is now assured.

The history of Donne’s reputation is the most remarkable of any major writer in English; no other body of great poetry has fallen so far from favor for so long. In Donne’s own day his poetry was highly prized among the small circle of his admirers, who read it as it was circulated in manuscript, and in his later years he gained wide fame as a preacher. For some 30 years after his death successive editions of his verse stamped his powerful influence upon English poets. During the Restoration his writing went out of fashion and remained so for several centuries. Throughout the 18th century, and for much of the 19th century, he was little read and scarcely appreciated. It was not until the end of the 1800s that Donne’s poetry was eagerly taken up by a growing band of avant-garde readers and writers. His prose remained largely unnoticed until 1919.

In the first two decades of the 20th century Donne’s poetry was decisively rehabilitated. Its extraordinary appeal to modern readers throws light on the Modernist movement, as well as on our intuitive response to our own times. Donne may no longer be the cult figure he became in the 1920s and 1930s, when T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats, among others, discovered in his poetry the peculiar fusion of intellect and passion and the alert contemporariness which they aspired to in their own art. He is not a poet for all tastes and times; yet for many readers Donne remains what Ben Jonson judged him: “the first poet in the world in some things.” His poems continue to engage the attention and challenge the experience of readers who come to him afresh. His high place in the pantheon of the English poets now seems secure.

Over a literary career of some 40 years Donne moved from skeptical naturalism to a conviction of the shaping presence of the divine spirit in the natural creation. Yet his mature understanding did not contradict his earlier vision. He simply came to anticipate a Providential disposition in the restless whirl of the world. The amorous adventurer nurtured the dean of St. Paul’s.

Metaphysical Poetry

What Does Metaphysical mean?

The word ‘meta’ means ‘after’, so the literal translation of  ‘metaphysical’ is ‘after the physical’. Basically, metaphysics deals with questions that can’t be explained by science. It questions the nature of reality in a philosophical way.

Here are some common metaphysical questions:

• Does God exist ?

• Is there a difference between the way things appear to us and the way they really are? Essentially, what is the difference between reality and perception?

• Is everything that happens already predetermined? If so, then is free choice non-existent?

• Is consciousness limited to the brain ?

Metaphysics can cover a broad range of topics from religious to consciousness; however, all the questions about metaphysics ponder the nature of reality. And of course, there is no one current answers to any of these questions. Metaphysics is about exploration and philosophy, not about science and math.

Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

     About Poem

“Death, be not Proud,” also referred to as Sonnet X, is a fourteen-line sonnet written by John Donne, an English metaphysical poet, and Christian cleric. It is one of the nineteen Holy Sonnets which were published in 1633 within the first edition of Songs and Sonnets. It was written probably in 1609 when Donne was working for the English church as an anti-Catholic advocate. This poem is an ecclesiastical lyric that looks at death in the context of John’s religious beliefs and socio-political situation of seventeenth-century England.

“Death, not be Proud” is written in England of the seventeenth century. It was the time when the British were expanding across the world. Also, it had been a time of great religious turmoil. Life at that time in England was uncertain, violent, and unstable. Donne was living in the time of the anti-Catholic environment. People were imprisoned for their Catholicism. They were killed as well. During that religious tension, Donne converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism. Later, he became a cleric. His religious experience and beliefs are the main subject of this poem.

Summary 

“ Death be not proud” is a well-known holy sonnet by John Donne . This sonnet is addressed by the poet to death to it. The aim of the poet behind writing this sonnet east to nullify the fear of death. The  poet has presented altogether a different picture of death in the percent sonnet.

The sonnet opens with poet’s instruction to death that their need for death to proud anything focus  their people who consider death mighty and dangerous bad the poet believes that death is neither mighty nor dangerous death believes that. It has a capacity to kill people but the poet is of the option that death is neither mighty nor dangerous. It has no capacity to kill and body if the poet is asked draw a picture of death. What poet who draw a picture of a man enjoying sound sleep and taking rest if death offers rest and sound sleep to the people pleasure should out of death and nobody should be afraid of death.

The poet gives one examples to nullify fear of death. Even the best of the human beings have gone with death the soonest one can gave a numbers of examples to prove that the best people go with death without getting disturbed and many of them have gone the examples of Keats and kalapi who left this world very soon.

According to the poet death is a slave those four elements are feat, chance, kings and man in distress. Their three residential places or for death to live those places are poisons, war and sickness. The meaning is who so ever invites sickness or poisons of war, such a person invites death always live in poisons, sickness and nor. The poet finds own remarkable difference between how death causes sleep and haw sleep is causered by a mother death causes sleep in stroke but mother and her motherly affection arose sleep very slowly and jauntily.

The poet confounds this sonnet saying that death is nothing nor than they short sleep after one short sleep we getup eternally and this stements of  John Donne indicates that Donne believed the theory of rebirth if death is treaded in this manner on body will be afred of the death. This how end of the poem John Donne tries 10 convince all that their we be no fear of death and death it self with will died because no body will be afread of the death.

Theme

The Major theme in the poem is the powerlessness of death. The poem comprises the poet’s emotions, mocking the position of death and arguing that Death is unworthy of fear or awe. According to him, death gives birth to our soul. Therefore, it should not consider itself mighty, or superior as “death” is not invincible. The poet also considers death an immense pleasure similar to sleep and rest. For him, the drugs can also provide the same experience. The poem foreshadows the realistic presentation of death and also firmly believes in eternal 

Conclusion

The poet once again says that death is a kind of sleep, after which the soul will wake up to live forever and becomes immortal. Thus Donne degrades death and declares happily the impotence of death. So we should not fear death as it has power over our souls.

Reference 

John Donne poetry foundation

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/johndonne

Poem summary is view Mandaliya sir video

 Theme- https://literarydevices.net/death-be-not-proud/

word:1552

Assignment Sem 1 : Frankenstein characters

 

                               Frankenstein Characters  

Name – Janvi Nakum

Paper – Literature of the  Romantics

Roll no- 11

Enrollment no –4069206420210020

Email id – janvinakum360@gmail.com

Batch-2021-2023(M.A. Sem – 1)

Submitted to – S.B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Victor Frankenstein

Victor’s life story is at the heart of Frankenstein. A young Swiss boy, he grows up in Geneva reading the works of the ancient and outdated alchemists, a background that serves him ill when he attends university at Ingolstadt. There he learns about modern science and, within a few years, masters all that his professors have to teach him. He becomes fascinated with the “secret of life,” discovers it, and brings a hideous monster to life. The monster proceeds to kill Victor’s youngest brother, best friend, and wife; he also indirectly causes the deaths of two other innocents, including Victor’s father. Though torn by remorse, shame, and guilt, Victor refuses to admit to anyone the horror of what he has created, even as he sees the ramifications of his creative act spiraling out of control.

Victor changes over the course of the novel from an innocent youth fascinated by the prospects of science into a disillusioned, guilt-ridden man determined to destroy the fruits of his arrogant scientific endeavor. Whether as a result of his desire to attain the godlike power of creating new life or his avoidance of the public arenas in which science is usually conducted, Victor is doomed by a lack of humanness. He cuts himself off from the world and eventually commits himself entirely to an animalistic obsession with revenging himself upon the monster.

At the end of the novel, having chased his creation ever northward, Victor relates his story to Robert Walton and then dies. With its multiple narrators and, hence, multiple perspectives, the novel leaves the reader with contrasting interpretations of Victor: classic mad scientist, transgressing all boundaries without concern, or brave adventurer into unknown scientific lands, not to be held responsible for the consequences of his explorations.

  The Monster

The monster is Victor Frankenstein’s creation, assembled from old body parts and strange chemicals, animated by a mysterious spark. He enters life eight feet tall and enormously strong but with the mind of a new born. Abandoned by his creator and confused, he tries to integrate himself into society, only to be shunned universally. Looking in the mirror, he realizes his physical grotesqueness, an aspect of his persona that blinds society to his initially gentle, kind nature. Seeking revenge on his creator, he kills Victor’s younger brother. After Victor destroys his work on the female monster meant to ease the monster’s solitude, the monster murders Victor’s best friend and then his new wife.

While Victor feels unmitigated hatred for his creation, the monster shows that he is not a purely evil being. The monster’s eloquent narration of events (as provided by Victor) reveals his remarkable sensitivity and benevolence. He assists a group of poor peasants and saves a girl from drowning, but because of his outward appearance, he is rewarded only with beatings and disgust. Torn between vengefulness and compassion, the monster ends up lonely and tormented by remorse. Even the death of his creator-turned-would-be-destroyer offers only bittersweet relief: joy because Victor has caused him so much suffering, sadness because Victor is the only person with whom he has had any sort of relationship.

Robert Walton

Walton’s letters to his sister form a frame around the main narrative, Victor Frankenstein’s tragic story. Walton captains a North Pole–bound ship that gets trapped between sheets of ice. While waiting for the ice to thaw, he and his crew pick up Victor, weak and emaciated from his long chase after the monster. Victor recovers somewhat, tells Walton the story of his life, and then dies. Walton laments the death of a man with whom he felt a strong, meaningful friendship beginning to form.

Walton functions as the conduit through which the reader hears the story of Victor and his monster. However, he also plays a role that parallels Victor’s in many ways. Like Victor, Walton is an explorer, chasing after that “country of eternal light”—unpossessed knowledge. Victor’s influence on him is paradoxical: one moment he exhorts Walton’s almost-mutinous men to stay the path courageously, regardless of danger; the next, he serves as an abject example of the dangers of heedless scientific ambition. In his ultimate decision to terminate his treacherous pursuit, Walton serves as a foil (someone whose traits or actions contrast with, and thereby highlight, those of another character) to Victor, either not obsessive enough to risk almost-certain death or not courageous enough to allow his passion to drive him.

Elizabeth Lavenza

Elizabeth is Frankenstein’s adopted sister and his wife. She is also a mother-figure: when Frankenstein’s real mother is dying, she says that Elizabeth “must supply my place.” Elizabeth fills many roles in Frankenstein’s life, so when the Monster kills her, Frankenstein is deprived of almost every form of female companionship at once.

Some critics consider Elizabeth a vague, unrealistic character who is far less developed than the male characters in the novel. One reason Elizabeth may seem insubstantial is that Frankenstein, the narrator, doesn’t see her very clearly. When he does see her, it’s as a possession: “I looked upon Elizabeth as mine.” Elizabeth dies because at a crucial moment Frankenstein overlooks her entirely. The Monster tells him “I will be with you on your wedding night” but it doesn’t occur to Frankenstein that the Monster is threatening Elizabeth.

Henry Clerval

Clerval’s story runs parallel to Frankenstein’s, illustrating the connection between Frankenstein’s outsized ambition and the more commonplace ambitions of ordinary men. Clerval is first described as a boy who loved “enterprise, hardship and even danger, for its own sake.” Like Walton, Clerval shares Frankenstein’s desire to achieve great things at any cost.

Also like Frankenstein, Clerval makes a discovery at university. Clerval believes he has found “the means of materially assisting the progress of European colonization and trade” in India. Frankenstein suggests a parallel between Clerval’s discovery and his own creation of the Monster when he argues that colonialism is the work of ambitious men like him. Without ambition, he says, “America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.” 

Frankenstein’s friendship with Clerval also shows the importance of companionship in the novel. Frankenstein draws strength and comfort from having a friend who shares his experiences and feelings: “Excellent friend! how sincerely you did love me, and endeavor to elevate my mind until it was on a level with your own!” Minor Characters

 Minor Characters 

Alphonse Frankenstein

Victor's father. A devoted husband and parent, and a well-respected public magistrate. Alphonse is a loving father to Victor, and a man who believes in family and society.

Justine Moritz

A young woman who the Frankenstein adopt at the age of 12. She is convicted of the murder of William Frankenstein on circumstantial evidence and executed. Though all the Frankenstein’s believe she is innocent, only Victor knows that the monster is the true murderer.

William Frankenstein

Victor's youngest brother, beloved by everyone. The monster strangles William in the woods outside Geneva in order to hurt Victor for abandoning him. William’s death deeply saddens Victor and burdens him with tremendous guilt about having created the monster.

Peasants

A family of peasants, including a blind old man, De Lacey; his son and daughter, Felix and Agatha: and a foreign woman named Safle. The monster learns how to speak and interact  by observing them. When he reveals himself to them to them, hoping for friendship, they beat him and chase him away.

Ernest Frankenstein

Victor's younger brother by six years. He is the only Frankenstein to survive the novel.

Caroline Beaufort

Beaufort's daughter, Victor's mother, and Alphonse Frankenstein's wife. Caroline is an example of idealized womanhood: smart, kind, generous, and resourceful. Caroline dies of scarlet fever when Victor is seventeen.

Beaufort

Caroline's father and a close friend to Alphonse Frankenstein. Beaufort was a merchant who fell into poverty and moved to Lucerne with his daughter. He died soon thereafter.

Felix

The son of De Lacey and brother of Agatha. Felix falls in love with Safie and marries her in exchange for helping her father escape from prison. When the monster enters his family's cottage in Germany, Felix pelts it with rocks and chases it away.

Agatha

De Lacey's daughter. She represents an ideal of womanliness: kind, gentle, and devoted to her family.

Safie

The young Turkish "Arabian" whose beauty captivates Felix. Though raised as a Muslim, she longs for a freer and happier life with Felix, a Christian.

Margaret Saville

Robert Walton's sister and the recipient of his letters, which frame the novel.

M. Waldman

Victor's chemistry professor at Ingolstadt. He supports Victor's pursuit of "natural philosophy," especially chemistry, and becomes a mentor to Victor.

M. Krempe

Victor's professor of natural philosophy at Ingolstadt. A short squat conceited man, Krempe calls Victor's studies "nonsense."

Mr. Kirwin

The magistrate who accuses Victor of Henry’s murder and An Irish magistrate.

Reference

 https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/frankenstein/characters /

Frankenstein Character Analysis Lit Charts

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/frankenstein/characters

Assignment Sem 1 : Samuel Taylor

 Romantic Era Samuel Taylor

 

Name – Janvi Nakum

Paper- History of English Literature

Roll no- 11

Enrollment no –4069206420210020

Email id – janvinakum360@gmail.com

Batch- 2021-2023(M.A. Sem – 1)

Submitted to – S.B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

     Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

Introduction 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is the premier poet-critic of modern English tradition, distinguished for the scope and influence of his thinking about literature as much as for his innovative verse. Active in the wake of the French Revolution as a dissenting pamphleteer and lay preacher, he inspired a brilliant generation of writers and attracted the patronage of progressive men of the rising middle class. As William Wordsworth’s collaborator and constant companion in the formative period of their careers as poets, Coleridge participated in the sea change in English verse associated with Lyrical Ballads (1798). His poems of this period, speculative, meditative, and strangely oracular, put off early readers but survived the doubts of Wordsworth and Robert Southey to become recognized classics of the romantic idiom.

Coleridge renounced poetic vocation in his thirtieth year and set out to define and defend the art as a practicing critic. His promotion of Wordsworth’s verse, a landmark of English literary response, proceeded in tandem with a general investigation of epistemology and metaphysics. Coleridge was preeminently responsible for importing the new German critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich von Schelling; his associated discussion of imagination remains a fixture of institutional criticism while his occasional notations on language proved seminal for the foundation and development of Cambridge English in the 1920s. In his distinction between culture and civilization Coleridge supplied means for a critique of the utilitarian state, which has been continued in our own time. And in his late theological writing he provided principles for reform in the Church of England. Coleridge’s various and imposing achievement, a cornerstone of modern English culture, remains an incomparable source of informed reflection on the brave new world whose birth pangs he attended.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on October 21, 1772 in the remote Devon village of Ottery St. Mary, the tenth and youngest child of Ann Bowdon Coleridge and John Coleridge, a school-master and vicar whom he was said to resemble physically as well as mentally. In vivid letters recounting his early years he describes himself as “a genuine Sans culotte, my veins uncontaminated with one drop of Gentility.” The childhood of isolation and self-absorption which Coleridge describes in these letters has more to do, on his own telling, with his position in the family. Feelings of anomie, unworthiness, and incapacity persisted throughout a life of often compulsive dependency on others.

A year after the death of his father in 1781 Coleridge was sent to Christ’s Hospital, the London grammar school where he would pass his adolescence training in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, at which he excelled, and in English composition. His basic literary values were formed here under the tutelage of the Reverend James Bowyer, a larger-than-life figure who balanced classical models with native English examples drawn from Shakespeare and Milton. While Wordsworth was imitating Thomas Gray at Hawkshead Grammar School, Coleridge was steeping in this long tradition of distinguished writing, learning to compose on Bowyer’s principles. 

These included an insistence on sound sense and clear reference in phrase, metaphor, and image: literary embroidery was discouraged. So were conventional similes and stale poetic diction. Coleridge’s later development as a poet may be characterized as an effort to arrive at a natural voice which eschewed such devices. Critical of the rhetorical excesses of the poetry of sensibility which prevailed at the time, he would join forces with Wordsworth in promoting “natural thoughts with natural diction”.

In the wake of the republication of Lyrical Ballads in early 1801 Coleridge’s critical project became a protracted effort to come to terms with Wordsworth’s radical claims in the “Preface” for a poetry composed “in the real language of men.” This was the “New School” of “natural thoughts in natural diction”: Coleridge’s own school despite his differences with Wordsworth. His effort to make the case for the new verse in the teeth of pitched hostility on the part of reviewers culminated in his Biographia Literaria (1817), where the “Old School” is treated anecdotally in the opening chapters on the way to the triumph of Wordsworth’s voice. The fifteen years between the “Preface” and Biographia Literaria were consumed with working through the critical agenda which Coleridge set himself at the turn of the century. The process was a fitful, often tortuous one. The metaphysical investigation assumed a life of its own, waylaid by deep plunges into Kant and Schelling, among others. It culminates in the first volume of the Biographia Literaria with an effort to provide rational ground for the critical exercise which follows in the second. His definition of imagination remains an important part of his poetic legacy, nevertheless, since it underwrites the development of a symbolist aesthetic still associated with his name though at odds with his enduring commitments.

The thoughtful approach to Wordsworth in the second volume represents Coleridge’s understanding of poetry at its best. His account of the Lyrical Ballads project challenges some of Wordsworth’s claims in the “Preface” to the second edition in a way which distinguishes the effective from the peculiar in his verse. Readers have often taken Coleridge’s theoretic pronouncements about imagination as constituting his poetics, while the account of Wordsworth’s verse shows him applying more conventional standards in new and thoughtful ways. This discussion of the new school in English poetry includes a detailed treatment of the question of poetic language as raised by Wordsworth, and it is Coleridge’s response to his positions in the Lyrical Ballads “Preface” that makes up the real centerpiece of the argument. The defense of poetic diction in particular is important for understanding his idea of poetry. Its roots lie in a long meditation on language, not in a philosophically derived faculty of imagination.

Coleridge  Famous Three Poem

  The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

This poem is most certainly Coleridge’s best-known. It was written between 1797 and 1798 and first appeared in Lyrical Ballads. It is a frame narrative focusing on the story of a mariner who wants to tell his story. Broadly, it is based around one man’s choice to shoot down an albatross and the bad luck that strikes the ship afterward. It is thought that Coleridge was inspired to write ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ while spending time with William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. Wordsworth himself claimed to have given Samuel Taylor Coleridge the basis for the story by relaying the narrative of another story, A Voyage Round The World by Way of the Great South Sea by Captain George Shelvocke, published in 1726.

  Kubla Khan

The full title of this poem is ‘Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment. Samuel Taylor Coleridge finished it in 1797 and published in 1816 alongside ‘Christabel’ and ‘The Pains of Sleep’. The preface tells the reader that the inspiration came from a dream the writer had, while under the influence of opium and reading about the summer palace of Kubla Khan, the Mongol ruler. Coleridge also claims in the preface that he was interrupted while writing, and could therefore not finish the poem as he has planned. It was not until he was encouraged by Lord Byron to do so that Coleridge published the piece. Today, the poem is considered to be one of, if not the, most famous example of Romanticism in the English language.

  Human Life

‘Human Life’ describes a speaker’s frustration with the idea that there is in fact no purpose to life, nor is there existence after death. The speaker meditates on what happens after one dies. Considering, as some think, that when someone dies, they are dead for good. There is nothing to penetrate the “gloom” and “doom” that is death. Life is brief, a “flash,” and is then over. But, the speaker considers life and death very differently.  He uses the example of Milton, saying that no one as important as Milton could possibly know a final death. Surely, he declares, there is something else.

Conclusion 

 Coleridge as a Romantic Poet. Coleridge died in 1834 after years of personal discomfort and disappointment. A legend in his time, he came to be seen by friends and contemporaries as the genius who failed. The failure was largely relative to early expectations, however, and to hopes defeated by disease and drugs. Despite everything, Coleridge can still be regarded as a groundbreaking and, at his best, a powerful poet of lasting influence. His idea of poetry remains the standard by which others in the English sphere are tried. As a political thinker, and as a Christian apologist, Coleridge proved an inspiration to the important generation after his own. Recent publication of his private notebooks has provided further evidence of the constant ferment and vitality of his inquiring spirit.

Reference 

Coleridge life

Poetry Foundation 

Biographia Literaria ,Chapter 1

https://www.poetryfondation.org/poet/samuel-taylor-colridge

Samuel famous three poems 

https://poemanalysis.com/best-poems/samuel-taylor-coleridge/

Word: 1500

Assignment Sem 1 : Browning works

 Browning works

Name – Janvi Nakum

Paper- Literature of the Victorians

Roll no- 11

Enrollment no –4069206420210020

Email id – janvinakum360@gmail.com

Batch- 2021-2023(M.A. Sem – 1)

Submitted to – S.B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

  Robert Browning Work

About Poet 

Robert Browning (1812-89) was a prolific poet, so whittling down his poetic oeuvre to just ten defining poems is going to prove a challenge. With that in mind, it’s best to view the following list of Browning’s ten best poems as indicative – there are many other classic Robert Browning poems around. Still, these are our particular favourites, and, we hope, none is out of place in a Browning top ten.

Browning produced comparatively little poetry during his married life. Apart from a collected edition in 1849 he published only Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850), an examination of different attitudes toward Christianity, perhaps having its immediate origin in the death of his mother in 1849; an introductory essay (1852) to some spurious letters of Shelley, Browning’s only considerable work in prose and his only piece of critical writing; and Men and Women (1855). This was a collection of 51 poems—dramatic lyrics such as “Memorabilia,” “Love Among the Ruins,” and “A Toccata of Galuppi’s”; the great monologues such as “Fra Lippo Lippi,” “How It Strikes a Contemporary,” and “Bishop Blougram’s Apology”; and a very few poems in which implicitly (“By the Fireside”) or explicitly (“One Word More”) he broke his rule and spoke of himself and of his love for his wife. Men and Women, however, had no great sale, and many of the reviews were unfavourable and unhelpful. Disappointed for the first time by the reception of his work, Browning in the following years wrote little, sketching and modeling in clay by day and enjoying the society of his friends at night. At last Mrs. Browning’s health, which had been remarkably restored by her life in Italy, began to fail. On June 29, 1861, she died in her husband’s arms. In the autumn he returned slowly to London with his young son.

Poems

  ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’.

Glad was I when I reach’d the other bank.

Now for a better country. Vain presage!

Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage

Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank

Soil to a plash? Toads in a poison's tank,

Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage …

A grotesque quasi-medieval dramatic monologue detailing the quest of the titular Roland, this poem was produced in an attempt to overcome writer’s block: in 1852 Browning had set himself the New Year’s Resolution to write a new poem every day, and this vivid dreamscape is what arose from his fevered imagination. Browning borrowed the title from a line in Shakespeare’s King Lear; the character of Roland as he appears in Browning’s poem has in turn inspired Stephen King to write his Dark Tower series, while J. K. Rowling borrowed the word ‘Slughorn’ from the poem when creating the name of her character Horace Slughorn.

  ‘Home Thoughts, from Abroad’.

Oh, to be in England

Now that April’s there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England—now!

So begins this classic Browning poem. The title singing the praises of the English countryside is less well-known than the poem’s opening line: ‘Oh, to be in England’. Browning reminds us that we often only manage to pin down what we love about our home country when we’re out of it: Browning spent much of the 1850s living in Italy, with his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Browning also wrote another poem on this theme, ‘Home Thoughts, from the Sea’.

‘My Last Duchess’.

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands …

Probably Robert Browning’s most famous (and widely studied) dramatic monologue, ‘My Last Duchess’ is spoken by the Duke of Ferrara, chatting away to an acquaintance (for whom we, the reader, are the robert-browning-2stand-in) and revealing a sinister back-story lurking behind the portrait of his late wife, the Duchess, that adorns the wall.

This poem is a masterpiece because it does what Browning’s dramatic monologues do best: invites us into the confidence of a speaker whose conversation reveals more about their personality and actions than they realise. The poem is not a narrative poem because it has a speaker rather than a narrator, but it nevertheless tells a story of a doomed marriage, a man capable only of irrational jealousy and possessive force, and male pride that barely conceals the fragile masculinity just lurking beneath. We should feel thoroughly uncomfortable when we finish reading the poem for the first time, because we have just heard a man confessing to the murder of his wife – and, perhaps, other wives – without actually confessing.

  ‘Porphyria’s Lover’.

The rain set early in to-night,

The sullen wind was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

And did its worst to vex the lake:

I listened with heart fit to break.

When glided in Porphyria; straight

She shut the cold out and the storm,

And kneeled and made the cheerless grate

Blaze up, and all the cottage warm …

One of Browning’s most disturbing poems – and it’s up against quite a bit of competition – ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ is spoken by a murderer, a man who strangles his lover with her own hair. It was one of Browning’s first great poems, published in 1836 when the poet was still in his mid-twenties. It was also one of his earliest experiments in the dramatic monologue, a form which he and Alfred, Lord Tennyson developed in the 1830s. Despite the poem’s reputation as one of Browning’s finest dramatic monologues, it – like much of Browning’s early work – was largely ignored during his lifetime.

  ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’.

I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!

You need not clap your torches to my face.

Zooks, what’s to blame? you think you see a monk!

What, ’tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,

And here you catch me at an alley’s end

Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?

So begins this, the first of two poems on this list to feature a medieval monk, and the first of two to feature a painter – ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’ sees the titular friar being accosted by some guards one night, and ending up drunkenly telling them – and us – about his whole life. In a poem like ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’ one can clearly see why Ezra Pound was influenced by Browning’s dramatic monologue, with their plainness of speech and the bluff, no-nonsense manner of Browning’s characters.

  ‘Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister’.

Whew! We’ll have our platter burnished,

Laid with care on our own shelf!

With a fire-new spoon we’re furnished,

And a goblet for ourself,

Rinsed like something sacrificial

Ere ’tis fit to touch our chaps –

Marked with L. for our initial!

This is another dramatic monologue, spoken by a Spanish monk who chooses to confide in us, the reader, about the monastery where he lives and works – and especially his dislike for a fellow monk, Brother Lawrence. Victorian poetry is seldom more deliciously catty than it is here. Follow the link above to read the poem and our stanza-by-stanza analysis.

  ‘Andrea del Sarto’.

But do not let us quarrel any more,

No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:

Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.

You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?

I’ll work then for your friend’s friend, never fear,

Treat his own subject after his own way,

Fix his own time, accept too his own price,

And shut the money into this small hand

When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?

Yet another dramatic monologue (detecting a theme among Robert Browning’s best poems yet?), ‘Andrea del Sarto’ was inspired by the real-life Renaissance painter Andrea d ’Angolo. Browning may have been using the figure of Andrea del Sarto – who had let other things get in the way of his artistic ambitions – as a way of commenting on his own sense of failure as a poet, having struggled to achieve critical or commercial success for decades.

  ‘Meeting at Night’.

The grey sea and the long black land;

And the yellow half-moon large and low;

And the startled little waves that leap

In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand …

This short poem about a lover travelling for a nocturnal tryst with his beloved is very different from many of the other classic Robert Browning poems on this list. But its use of sexually suggestive imagery to describe the ‘pushing prow’ of the boat as it enters the cove is stamped with Browning’s bold, progressive style

Conclusion

 He presented the poet speaking in his own voice, engaging in a series of dialogues with long-forgotten figures of literary, artistic, and philosophic history. The Victorian public was baffled by this, and Browning returned to the brief, concise lyric for his last volume, Asolando (1889), published on the day of his death. Browning died at his son's home Ca' Rezzonico in Venice on 12 December 1889. He was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey; his grave now lies immediately adjacent to that of Alfred Tennyson.

Reference

Collection of poem

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Browning/Legacy

Poem and definition

https://interestingliterature.com/the-best-robert-browning-poems/

Word:1598

Assignment Sem 1 :Thomas Gray

 Thomas Gray

                                           

Name – Janvi Nakum

Paper – Literature of the Neo-classical Period

Roll no- 11

Enrollment no –4069206420210020

Email id – janvinakum360@gmail.com

Batch-2021-2023 (M.A. Sem – 1 )

Submitted to – S.B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar University 

                                                  

Thomas Gray Life and Work

Introduction Poet

Thomas Gray 26 December 1716 was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in 1751.

Gray was a self- critical written who published only 13 poems in his lifetime, despite being very popular. He was even offered the position of Poet Laureate in 1757, though he declined. His writing is conventionally considered to be pre-Romantic but recent critical developments deny such teleological classification.

Writing and academia

Gray began seriously writing poems in 1742, mainly after the death of his close friend Richard West, which inspired “sonnet on the Death of Richard West”. He moved to Cambridge and began a self- directed programme of literary study, becoming one of the most learned men of his time. He became a Fellow first of Peterhouse College, Cambridge. According to Britannica, Gray moved to Peterhouse played a prank on him.

Gray spent most of his life as a scholar in Cambridge, and only later in his life did he begin travelling again. Although he was one of the least productive poets , he is regarded as the foremost English-language poet of the mid-18th century. In 1757, he was offered the post of Poet Laureate, which he refused. Gray was so self-critical and fearful of failure that he published only thirteen poems during his lifetime. He once wrote that he feared his collected works would be "mistaken for the works of a flea." Walpole said that "He never wrote anything easily but things of Humour." Gray came to be known as one of the "Graveyard poets" of the late 18th century, along with Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper, and Christopher Smart. Gray perhaps knew these men, sharing ideas about death, mortality, and the finality and sublimity of death.

In 1762, the Regius chair of Modern History at Cambridge, a sinecure which carried a salary of £400, fell vacant after the death of Shallet Turner, and Gray's friends lobbied the government unsuccessfully to secure the position for him. In the event, Gray lost out to Lawrence Brockett, but he secured the position in 1768 after Brockett's death.

Works

• Thomas Gray Poems

• Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

• Hymn to Adversity

• Ode On A Distant Prospect Of Eton College

• Ode on the death of a favorite cat

• Ode On The Pleasure Arising From Vicissitude

• Ode On The Spring

• On the Death of Richard West

• The Bard

• The Curse Upon Edward

• The Fatal Sisters: An Ode 

• The Progress of Poesy: A Pindaric ode

-An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard

An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard, meditative poem written in iambic pentameter quatrains by Thomas Gray, published in 1751.

A meditation on unused human potential, the conditions of country life, and mortality, An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard is one of the best-known elegies in the language. It exhibits the gentle melancholy that is characteristic of the English poets of the graveyard school of the 1740s and ’50s. The poem contains some of the best-known lines of English literature, notably “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen” and “Far from the madding Crowd’s ignoble Strife.”

The elegy opens with the narrator musing in a graveyard at close of day; he speculates about the obscure lives of the villagers who lie buried and suggests that they may have been full of rich promise that was ultimately stunted by poverty or ignorance. The churchyard in the poem is believed to be that of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, which Gray visited often and where he now lies buried.

Summary 

Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” presents the omniscient speaker who talks to the reader. First, he stands alone in a graveyard deep in thought. While there, he thinks about the dead people buried there. The graveyard referred to here is the graveyard of the church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire. The speaker contemplates the end of human life throughout the poem. He remarks on the inevitability of death that every individual has to face.

Besides mourning the loss of someone, the speaker in the elegy reminds the reader that all people will die one day. Death is an unavoidable and natural thing in everyone’s life. When one dies today, tomorrow, a stranger will see the person’s tombstone. Out of curiosity, he will ask about the person buried there to a villager. The villager will reply that he knew the man. He would add that he had seen him in various spots. Sometimes, he will also remark that he had stopped seeing the man one day, and then there was the tombstone.

In the poem, Gray, the poet himself, writes the epitaph of his own. He says that his life is full of sadness and depression. However, he feels proud of his knowledge. He calls it incomparable. In addition to this, he says that ‘No one is perfect in this world.’ So, he asks the reader not to judge anyone in the graveyard. Each and every soul is different and takes rest for eternity in the graveyard. In conclusion, the poet, through the speaker, ends the elegy by saying that death is an inevitable event in this world. Also, he says that man’s efforts and his struggles to succeed in life comes to an end in death. Thus, death conquers man regardless of his successes and/or failures in his endeavors during his life.

Themes

The poem, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”, speaks of ordinary people. It is an elegy for poor villagers. They are not famous but they are honest. So, the poet has written this poem in honoring them. The poem talks about death as an equalizer. Rich or poor should end in death. Moreover, no man can escape death. In death, all are equal. Besides, nothing including any amount of rich or glory can bring the dead to life. Even poor people deserve respect for their death. Given opportunities, they would have become great men in their times.

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College poem 

 Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" is an 18th-century ode by Thomas Gray. It is composed of ten 10-line stanzas, rhyming ABABCCDEED, with the B lines and final D line in iambic trimeter and the others in iambic tetrameter. In this poem, Gray coined the phrase "Ignorance is bliss".

Two themes play through Gray’s “ Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College”. The major theme is the inevitability of suffering, death, and unhappiness for humankind. Sad though the theme is, Gray tempers it with his own father like concern in keeping this knowledge from the children.

About Poem

The poem splits into two even parts, with the first fifty lines concentrating on the past and the present, with the boys at school devoting all their energies to play and study and paying little heed to the future, and the second half dealing with that future and the pain and suffering that it is likely to bring.

The poem begins with a look at the distant past, using suitable archaic language to do so: “Ye distant spires, ye antique towers” and with a reference to the school’s founder in “Henry’s holy shade” (King Henry VI was thought by some to be qualified for sainthood). There is a good deal of fanciful and overblown language here, not untypical of 18th century poets; it might be noted, for example, that Eton College has no spires and only one tower!

The poem ends with another couplet that has entered the common stock of English quotations, although most people who use it have no idea from whence it came: “where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise”. This is often misinterpreted as stating that it is a good thing to be uneducated, but that is not what Gray means by “ignorance”. Instead, he is summarizing everything that has gone before in this poem to say that misfortunes will come in their own good time and it would be cruel to inflict them on young people before they are ready to bear them.

There is a lot of artificiality in this poem, both in the diction and the sentiments expressed. There are, however, both echoes of Milton and foretastes of Blake, both of whom dealt with the innocence/experience theme more convincingly than Gray. As mentioned earlier, Gray is a transitional figure in the history of English poetry, and “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” is a poem that illustrates that transition as neatly as any.

Conclusions

Gray died on 30 July 1771in Cambridge, and was buried beside his mother in the churchyard of St Giles’ church in Stoke Poges, the reputed setting for his famous Elegy. His grave can still be seen there.

Reference

Thomas Gray life and Work Wikipedia

Elegypoem:https://poemanalysis.com/thomasgray/elegy,written,country,churchyard,and analysis

Word: 1514

Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde led a cosmopolitan lifestyle as a writer, playwright, journalist, intellectual, and aesthete. An exceptionally gifted student, Wilde studied at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford, on scholarship. At Oxford, Wilde came under the influence of tutor Walter Pater’s Aesthetic philosophy—“art for arts sake”—and developed a reputation as an eccentric, flamboyant, and foppish young man. Moving from Oxford to London upon graduation, Wilde then published his first volume of poems to some critical acclaim. Though a fledgling writer, Wilde’s fame as a proponent of Aestheticism grew during his yearlong lecture tour of the United States, England, and Ireland. Wilde married Dublin heiress Constance Lloyd in 1884. In the years following the couple had two sons, while Wilde published his serialized novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and made his way as writer and editor in London’s publishing scene. Wilde met his lover Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, an undergraduate at Oxford, in 1891. Wilde’s career as a playwright flourished in the coming years as he wrote a number of successful plays for the Paris and London stages including Lady Windemere’s Fan, Salomé, An Ideal Husband, and finally The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895. But Wilde’s success was short-lived as he became embroiled in scandal. A series of trials that pitted Wilde against Lord Alfred’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, exposed Wilde’s homosexuality, causing him to be charged and sentenced for “gross indecency.” After serving two years in prison, Wilde retired to the European continent, where he wrote occasionally under an assumed name, briefly rekindled his romance with Lord Alfred, and converted to Catholicism. Shrouded in infamy, Wilde died of cerebral meningitis in Paris at the turn of the 20th century.

Important of Being Earnest

About Novel

The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage, and the resulting satire of Victorian ways. Some contemporary reviews praised the play's humor and the culmination of Wilde's artistic career, while others were cautious about its lack of social messages. Its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make The Importance of Being Earnest Wilde's most enduringly popular play. 

In Novel Characters

Jack Worthing (Ernest), a young gentleman from the country, in love with Gwendolen Fairfax.

Algernon Moncrieff, a young gentleman from London, the nephew of Lady Bracknell, in love with Cecily Cardew.

Gwendolen Fairfax, a young lady, loved by Jack Worthing.

Lady Bracknell, a society lady, Gwendolen's mother.

Cecily Cardew, a young lady, the ward of Jack Worthing.

Miss Prism, Cecily's governess.

The Reverend Canon Chasuble, the priest of Jack's parish.

Lane, Algernon's butler.

Merriman, Jack's servant. hat is the difference between the two subtitles?

wild originally subtitled the Importance of being earnest "a Serious Comedy for Trivial People" but changed that to "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People". w

“Analyze Earnest’s subtitle, “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People”. What do you think Wilde meant by this?” Oscar Wilde’s play “The Importance of Being Earnest” follows the story of Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, two Victorian era gentlemen who practice the habit of “bunburying” – the act of inventing a friend whose needs are so compelling that nobody will question the need to visit that friend for an extended period of time on short notice. In addition to this double-life motif, the themes of marriage, death and “the dandy” are explored in Wilde’s melodramatic Victorian play. The play is trivial in the sense that serious concerns such as marriage and death are discussed in a very stale and over-chewed manner. Moreover, the opposite is true in that the characters all part of the Victorian upper-class take matters that everyday people consider trivial very seriously.

Though Wilde originally gave the play the subtitle A Serious Comedy for Trivial People, he decided to change it to A Trivial Comedy for Serious People. The art of satire is to ridicule ideas, conditions, or social conventions with which the audience is familiar without alienating that audience. In order for Wilde to reach audience members, they must attend the production. If Wilde openly and publicly insulted them by referring to them as "trivial people," they would not attend and might even react more forcefully. Despite his efforts, however, people did indeed realize he was calling them trivial through his comedy, and in part this caused the play to be banned.

Words: 800

The Rover

 Angellica Character

Angellica is a famous courtesan in Spain. She is mistress of a once- powerful, deceased Spanish general, and she has returned to Naples to put herself up for sale. for sale. Her monthly fee is 1,000 Spanish crowns, and her primary potential suitors are Don Pedro and Don Antonio. Angellica is a beautiful woman, who, we are led to believe, would have no problem securing the monthly fee for which she has put herself on the market. Don Pedro and Don Antonio both agree to pay the sum, however Angellica falls in love with Willmore, to whom she promises her heart. When she discovers that Willmore has not been true to her, she confronts him with a pistol, and threatens to kill him with it.

Angellica is a courtesan, a paid- for social and sexual companion who recently returned to Naples looking to take on new clients. Schott said Angelica represents a character who at the time was unheard of- an independent, self- sufficient woman who was comfortable with her sexuality

Consider  the financial negotiations which one makes before marrying a prospective bride the same as prostitution. Do you agree?

Angellica makes a good point, marriage and prostitution are both relationships that are customarily contingent, to varying degrees, upon financial considerations. They are of course not entirely the same, but it would seem hypocritical to denounce one and participate in the other. The point of this statement is to acknowledge that Marriage that marriage can be just as amoral as prostitution if one considers placing a monetary value on love the reason behind prostitutions behind prostitution’s a morality.

Hard Time

 Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens FRSA ( 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.[1] His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognized him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.

Discuss the views of F.R. Leavis and J.B. Priestley on ‘Hard Time’. With whom do you agree? why?

Hard Time by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens is known for writing about life during the Industrial Revolution. Hard Times, published in 1854, falls into this category. It focuses on the fictional town of Coketown, England and the people who live there and their struggles. It begins with Thomas Gradgrind lecturing about facts. Academic supervisor in the community of Coketown, Gradgrind believes facts provide the keys to success. Fun, needless to say, is normally withheld from Gradgrind's children, and he is horrified one day to find his children, Louisa and Tom, captivated by the sight of Coketown's circus. Gradgrind discusses this behavior with a close friend, the wealthy Josiah Bounderby. He blames the children's classmate, Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a circus performer, for piquing the children's interest in carnivals. Sissy, the two men decide, must leave school. But arriving at the circus to inform Sissy's father of her dismissal, they learn he has disappeared, probably never to return. Gradgrind determines Sissy should move into his home.

 In this novel two writer his own views and thought to write about dickens novel Hady Time see the views about two writers F.R. Leavis and J.B. Priestley.

 F.R. Leavis View: 

The inability of Dickens scholars to agree in their evaluation of particular novels has become one of the commonplaces of Dickens criticism Hard Time, especially ignored as a novel. On the other hand, such men as John Ruskin and George Bernard considered is Dickens’s best book. In recent vears, largely on the basis of the critical brilliance of F.R. Leavis's, it is the latter view that has prevailed.

           Dr. Leavis close reading and perceptive analysis seem to have set the book's reputation, once and for all, on firm aesthetic ground .

Hence, Edgar Johnson, the most important recent biographer of Dickens, accepts Leavis's evaluation wholeheartedly, concluding that the low eviations of the book are not the result of aesthetic failure on Dickens's part, but are to be explained by the fact that the book on " is an analysis and a condemnation of the ethos of industrialism." For literary critics to condemn a book on such non- aesthetic grounds is deplorable, but it is equally deplorable for literary critics to attempt to praise a work of art on such ground. And yet, this is just what defenders of the book, including the new- critical Dr. Leavis, have done.

 In the first chapter of The Great Tradition, Dr. Leavis writes," adult mind doesn't as a rule find in Dickens a challenge to an unusual and sustained seriousness I can think of only one of his books in which his distinctive creative genius and that is "Hard times..." controlled throughout to a unifying and organizing significance in the words "genius  is controlled To put Dr. Leavis speaks of. And the reader's consciousness of Dickens's moral purpose is, I suspect, what he means by the challenge to sustained seriousness. what I shall try to show is that both the challenge" organizing significance, and that is hard times..." The tendency of Dr. Leavis's criticism is critical novel.

J.B. Priestley View

Hard Times . . . . has had its special admirers, particularly among those who see Dickens as a propagandist for their own political-economic ideology. We are told that one Cambridge pundit  a few years ago, declared that the only Dickens novel worth reading was Hard Times — surely one of the most foolish statements of this age. It would be far more sensible to reverse this judgment, to say that of all the novels of Dickens's maturity Hard Times is the least worth reading. It is muddled in its direct political-social criticism. As a novel it falls far below the standard set by Dickens himself from Dombey and Son onwards. Here for once it is almost as if we are seeing Dickens through the eyes of his hostile critics, for in Hard Times there really are reckless and theatrical over-statements, there really are characters that are nothing but caricatures, there really is melodramatic muddled emotion- alism. On the other hand, only in a few odd places is there any evidence of Dickens's unique grotesque-poetic genius, so obvious in Bleak House. We may join him in condemning an industrialized commercial society, its values, its economics, its education, its withering relationships, but this does not mean we have to pretend an unsatisfactory novel is a masterpiece, just because it favours our side. . . .

The truth is, Dickens did not know enough about industrial England. He had given a public reading in Birmingham, which provided him with some horrifying glimpses of the grim Midlands. Because there was a big strike in Preston, he paid it a visit, but he found no drama there. He came away deeply sympathizing with the men but feeling doubtful about trade union organizers. He was not on any ground familiar to him. So his Coketown is merely a horrible appearance, and in order to offer us a sharp contrast to Gradgrind and Bounderby, their outlook and style of life, he sketches a travelling circus to represent arts, skills, warm personal relationships. But he could have found all these, together with many odd attractive characters, in Coketown, if he had really known it and not simply looked at it from a railway train. As it is, Coketown belongs to propaganda and not to creative imagination.

I am Agree with F.R.Leavis because the traditional approach in the novel. Hard Time did not get the recognition it so deserved. He observes a lot of unexacting Expectations from the author by the those time. Henry James The Europeans also suffered like Hard Time because of these unexacting expectations.

Words: 1032

Pamela or Virtue Rewarded

Pamela or Virtue Rewarded

Pamela or Virtue Rewarded is written by English writer is Samuel Richardson. Pamela or Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel. Novel published in 1740. The full title in novel is Pamela or Virtue Rewarded, makes  Richardson’s moral purpose.

Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson was an English writer and printer best known for three epistolary novels: Pamela or Virtue Rewarded, Clarissa: or the history of a young lady and The History of sir Charles Grandison. He was born in 19 August 1689, Mackworth, United Kingdom and he died in 4 July 1761, Parsons Green, London, United.

 Many character in the novel. But central and important character is Pamela. Pamela is fifteen year old girl. She belong a poor and she is a servant. She wrote a letter his father and mother his condition. In novel two volumes. Samuel Richardson's Pamela: or Virtue Rewarded gives us one of the eighteenth century's most famous love stories, though the novel may not sound very romantic to modern readers. In it, a rich gentleman named Mr. B relentlessly pursues the virginity of a beautiful and chaste serving girl named Pamela. An unscrupulous rake, Mr. B, wishes for nothing more than to have his way with the young girl. He repeatedly tries to rape and assault her. Unfortunately for Mr. B, Pamela is a paragon of virtue, and she always manages to escape his attacks. Eventually, Pamela's innate goodness reforms Mr. B, and he gives up his pursuit, instead offering her his hand in marriage. In a surprising twist, Pamela eventually accepts Mr. B's proposal and becomes the wife of her would-be rapist.

Before her death, this Lady recommends her servants and particularly Pamela to the Lady’s son: Mr. B. So he takes her into his service. However, Pamela begins to feel uncomfortable with him, as Mr. B becomes obsessed with Pamela. In the novel we can see Pamela’s efforts to keep her virtue. This is reflected when she speaks to her housekeeper, Mrs. Jervis, as well as in the great amount of letters Pamela writes to her parents, where, once again, she always emphasizes her virtue.

The rest of the novel deals with Pamela’s efforts to defend herself and her virtue from Mr. B.’s advances towards her, as well as her internal debate between love Mr. B and keep providing to her family, or holding true to her morals and losing her chance of a better life.

At the end, she agrees to marry him instead of simply let him taking advantage of her. Probably, because in this way, she retains her virtue and she also gains social status.

A Novel of Letters

Pamela: or Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel; that is, a piece of fiction comprised of letters. Why is this important? Well, letters give us insight into a character's interior world; if we read a character's letters, we begin to see how their inner life develops over time. Epistolary novels create characters who are well-rounded and complex rather than flat and one-dimensional. Promoting psychological depth, epistolary novels became all the rage in the eighteenth century and contributed to the growth of the novel as a literary form.

Is Pamela a reliable narrator ?if no, then why?

Reading the literary criticism which has been written almost 250 years after the first publication of Richardson’s Pamela 1 it is surprising to see how emotionally charged the Pamela-debate still is. Its central question, whether Pamela’s narration is reliable, is still able to initiate a heated discussion. The reason for this is that Pamela’s story is far more than the narration of the experience of a servant-girl. It always was and obviously still is a matter of politics and political correctness, almost comparable to the alleged sexual affairs of President Clinton. In Pamela’s case, however, we do not ask whether he really did it. Nobody wants to spare Mr. B. the embarrassment of being guilty of sexual harassment. Mr. B., clearly, is not the point of interest. Instead, we ask whether Pamela is really telling the truth about herself. This aspect of her reliability turns out to be the most important one. What is at stake is Pamela’s virtue, and this is the fate she shares with Mr. Clinton. Both have been elected to hold a powerful public position, with the difference that Pamela has not been elected by the people but by her author Samuel Richardson. I want to argue that Pamela’s problems apart.

Yes, then way reason is?

Pamela is a Richardson uses in Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded was meant to give Pamela’s voice more believability and reliability. Pamela depends on the in  virtue, and morality as exemplified by Pamela. Pamela is a reliable voice. On this note, whether Pamela is to be believed depends on not just how she tells her story.